The present invention relates to an information processing method, an information processing system and an information processing apparatus for presuming information accompanying a voice based on acoustic features extracted from the voice, a health care terminal apparatus for aiding the subject's health care, and a recording medium on which a computer program for implementing these is recorded.
Methods are known such that the feeling accompanying an input voice is presumed by analyzing the voice by use of an information processing apparatus such as a personal computer or a voice processing apparatus. Conventionally, two methods described below have principally been known:
One method is to identify a character string corresponding to the input voice by performing voice recognition on the voice and presume the accompanying feeling based on the contents of the character string. According to this method, by determining whether or not the contents of the identified character string coincide with the vocabulary information prepared as a vocabulary indicating feelings, one feeling is identified from among feelings classified into approximately 10 kinds such as joy, anger, sorrow, surprise and pleasure.
The other method is to presume the degree (intonation) of the feeling by analyzing the waveform of the input voice and extracting feature amounts such as the intensity (sound pressure level), the pitch frequency and the duration of the voice. According to this method, first, reference values of the feature amounts such as the sound pressure level, the pitch frequency and the duration are set as a preparation step prior to feeling presumption. As the reference values, for example, the average values of the feature amounts of populations such as adult men, adult women and children are used. When feeling presumption is performed, the subject's voice is newly taken, and the feature amounts are extracted by analyzing the waveform of the voice. Then, the extracted feature amounts are compared with the reference values of the population to which the subject belongs, and the degree of the subject's feeling is presumed based on the result of the comparison.
However, according to the method presuming the feeling based on the contents of the identified character string, the degree of the feeling cannot be presumed, and according to the method presuming the degree of the feeling from the feature amounts (the sound pressure level, the pitch frequency and the duration) of the voice, it is difficult to presume what feeling the presumed degree of the feeling corresponds to.
Moreover, when the average values of adult men, adult women and children are used as the reference values of the feature amounts, the subject's severalty cannot be reflected. Further, voices generally vary by aging and according to the subject's physical condition, and frequently vary according to the time when the voice is taken. Therefore, it is desirable that the feeling can be appropriately presumed so that aging, the subject's physical condition and the time when the voice is taken are reflected.
By the way, various robots have been developed that copy after the shapes and actions of pet animals, imaginary animals and the like so as to capture the subject's affection. These robots are designed to output voices to the subject through a speaker, capture the subject's voices through a microphone, take images with a CCD camera and move movable parts.
It is pursued to use this kind of robots, for example, for home health care of elderly persons. In this case, the robot obtains and stores information on the subject's health condition including results of a medical examination by interview such as the subject's physical condition and feeling obtained by performing a medical examination by interview and measurement data such as the temperature and the blood pressure measured by the subject himself, and periodically transmits the stored health condition information to a medical institution such as a hospital or a public health center. Moreover, when the elderly person's condition changes suddenly, the robot informs a predetermined emergency hospital of that. Further, a robot has recently been developed that includes a sensor for measuring the subject's health condition such as a pulse rate sensor so that the subject's pulse rate can be taken when the subject touches the part of the sensor.
These health care robots which aid the subject having no family living together or having no caregiver in his health care are convenient, particularly, to elderly persons living alone. However, conventionally, the focus has been frequently placed on changes in the subject's physical condition and sufficient care has not been taken of the subject's mental condition. Moreover, although the subject cares for the robot with interest for a while after the introduction of the robot when the robot is new to the subject, the subject who has to repeat predetermined processings every day gradually loses interest in the robot as time passes by.